‘according to the most recent compendium of history’s worst atrocities, Matthew White's Great Big Book of Horrible Things (Norton, 2011), religions have been responsible for 13 of the 100 worst mass killings in history, resulting in 47 million deaths. Communism has been responsible for 6 mass killings and 67 million deaths. If defenders of religion want to crow, “We were only responsible for 47 million murders—Communism was worse!”, they are welcome to do so, but it is not an impressive argument.

Fourth, many religious massacres took place in centuries in which the world’s population was far smaller. Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust. The death toll from the Thirty Years War was proportionally double that of World War I and in the range of World War II in Europe‘

Whether the Thirty Years War was more destructive than World War I and II is an interesting question; Germany and large parts of Central Europe undoubtedly suffered a demographic collapse in the 17th century (15-20% in the German States). However the overwhelming majority of deaths during the 30 Years’ War were caused by disease – specifically typhus, dysentery and bubonic plague. This situation was partially caused and exacerbated by the movement of the various armies through the German countryside – resulting in food shortages and the outbreak of epidemics. According to the detailed treatment given in Europe’s Tragedy by Peter H Wilson death records from towns appear to show few directly related to military violence and 30 years of warfare reaped around 450,000 military casualties.

It could be argued, in fact it should be argued that much of this mortality would not have happened were it not for the conflict - other areas of Europe suffered population declines in this period but not as precipitous as Germany’s – so there is a direct responsibility there and disease related deaths should be added to the tally. However if that is the case then you have to compare like with like. Close troop quarters and massive troop movements helped facilitate an influenza pandemic at the end of World War I – perhaps the greatest medical holocaust ever. Add these to the 15,000,000 slaughtered in World War and it becomes proportionally the deadliest conflict in world history.

In answer to another religion related question Pinker states:

‘Jesus deserves credit for stigmatizing revenge, one of the main motives for violence over the course of human history. But things started going downhill in 312 when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and the historical facts are not consistent with the claim that Christianity since then has been a force for nonviolence:

The Crusaders perpetrated a century of genocides that murdered a million people, equivalent as a proportion of the world’s population at the time to the Nazi holocaust.

Shortly afterwards, the Cathars of southern France were exterminated in another Crusader genocide because they had embraced the Albigensian heresy.

The Inquisition, according to Rummel, killed 350,000 people.

Martin Luther’s rant against the Jews is barely distinguishable from the writings of Hitler.

The three founders of Protestantism, Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII, had thousands of heretics were burned at the stake, as they and their followers took Jesus literally when he said, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”

Following the biblical injunction, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Christians killed 60,000-100,000 accused witches in the European witchhunts.

The European Wars of Religion had death rates that were double that of World War I and that were in the range of World War II in Europe.

Christian conquistadors massacred and enslaved native Americans in vast numbers, and perhaps twenty million were killed in all (not counting unintentional epidemics) by the European settlement of the Americas.

World War I, as I recall, was a war fought mostly by Christians against Christians. As for World War II and its associated horrors, see my answer to the previous question.

I was pleased to see Pinker’s statistics on the witch hunts – 60,000 over 3 centuries - are reasonably accurate (on the internet you regularly see figures of 9 million waved about) One wouldn’t want to act as some kind of apologist for killing people for imaginary crimes, however the figures for the Inquisition are far too high – 10,000 over six centuries is a more credible estimate. As far as I can make out from a quick scout through ‘google books’ Henry VIII burned 81 heretics, Calvin burned 1 (Servetus) and Luther believed that burning heretics was against the will of the Holy Spirit, thus giving the softie a fat 0. Not a very impressive total for the 3 founders of Protestantism.

The decline was not the result of a genocide campaign, in fact, in the case of the Spanish the settlers were small in number and depended on native communities to build and sustain their colonies. As a result officials became concerned about the mortality that was occurring and passed edicts to protect natives from colonial excesses; they had become convinced by voices such as Las Casas who argued it was Spanish rule causing the disaster, not understanding the horrific role of disease. None of this probably sprang from any noble motive but it shows how tenuous the accusation of genocide is.

In answer to one question (I’ve read that at the beginning of the 20th century, ninety percent of deaths in warfare were suffered by soldiers, but at the end, ninety percent were suffered by civilians) Pinker writes:

‘This is a bogus statistic; see pp. 317–320

No – if you want to see a load of bogus statistics start at page 1 and keep reading till you get to page 832; then read the FAQ for good measure.

45 comments:

The amount of nonsense Pinker is pumping out is absolutely scary, especially given the number of people who will potentially read and rely on his book and the website FAQ. It makes me angry, because he predictably will have a much greater outreach than any serious historian. He's actually sabotaging the work historians have done for decades to get to a realistic and balanced understanding of the past. If you care about what's true (or at least a sound approach to finding it out), you cannot help being appalled by his tactics.

On the Crusades point - 1 million from over 10 crusades spread over 3 centuries doesn't sound unreasonable. If anything it sounds restrained compared to his other stuff. Just wonder where he gets the crusaders = holocaust stuff from - unless he is talking about the massacres of Jews in Europe and the siege of Jerusalem ?. It's a bit of a stretch.

Ha - that could be a total minefield. I mean take the sack of Jerusalem. The Christian sources play up the death toll in order to boast and show the apocalyptic arrival of the kingdom of heaven. The Muslims play up the death toll to gain sympathy and show the barbarity of the crusaders. As a result the estimates run up to 70,000 which is more than the highest estimate for the population of the entire city at the time of the siege.

Where does he get the notion that the Thirty Years War was religious? The Pope and Catholic France were supporting Lutheran Sweden against Catholic Austria and Bavaria. Lutheran Saxony changed sides from time to time.

Fact is, the German princes did not declare independence from the Empire because they wished to be Protestant. The became Protestant because they wished to be independent from the Empire.

When you peel the onion, you always find kings and power underneath. Even the Huguenot wars might be better called the Wars of the French Succession, since it featured three Houses contending for the heritage of House Valois.

The OFloinn has an excellent point. I’ve noticed that basically any negative event/occurrence of pre-Enlightenment Europe is indiscriminately blamed on Christianity.

Regarding counting diseased related deaths that ensue after a violent conflict: presumably the overall goal of Pinker’s analysis is to measure the human ‘propensity’ to violence? If that is so, then shouldn’t diseased related deaths caused by violent conflicts either not be counted or at least discounted in some way? Or is Pinker’s goal simply to measure some broader sense of ‘violence’, as in ‘violent deaths’ – regardless of whether death was brought about by a specific intent to kill.

I realize that kings/higher-ups who planned wars in previous ages knew that violent conflict would bring about disease related deaths. However, if violence is defined as ‘exerting force’ or some such other dictionary definition, then it seems this still shouldn’t count. The fact that diseases ravaged communities after a violent conflict due to the paltry state of both medical technology and health/hygiene standards shouldn’t count as part of the human propensity to violence.

I realize that focusing on a strict ‘intent to kill’ complicates the analysis – but considering the significant independent variables of medical technology, health/hygiene standards, etc. – such is necessary if we want to conclude – not that ‘violence’ is down – but that humans are less violent.

"Crusaders, for example, killed 1 million people in world of 400 million, for a genocide rate that exceeds that of the Nazi Holocaust"..

It wasn't genocide, it was a series of wars. WW2 in Europe was not genocide against the German people, even though the Allies targeted Germans (incl. German civilians) specifically and after the war ethnically cleansed them from lands that had been German for a thousand years.

There were sporadic massacres of Jews in the Rhineland - though here we are talking about possibly a few hundred rather than thousands. Then of course there's the sack of Jerusalem and the looting of Constantinople. I don't know if any of these come under the strict definition of genocide. Certainly I doubt if these incidents if tallied would add up to 1 million or that the atrocities of the Crusaders were in any way comparable to the holocaust as Pinker seems to be suggesting. It's probably worth doing a post to develop that point.

The massacres of the Jews were carried out by Count Emicho of Leiningen, whose interest was pecuniary rather than religious. The big moneylenders of the time were Jews and Lombards, and the Lombard cities had armies. When some Jews took refuge in the bishop's palace, Emicho did not hesitate to storm the palace, which does not sound very religious. He and his "crusaders" never got near the Holy Land and were finally slaughtered by the king of Hungary. Meanwhile, such activities were condemned by both religious and secular authorities.

The Rules of War at the time held that if a city did not resist, it was not to be pillaged; but if it resisted it would be subject to a three-day sack. Both the Franks and the Saracens generally held to this practice, the main exception being Baybars unjustified massacre of Antioch. Antioch had remained staunchly Greek and Christian down to when Baybars ordered the gates closed and every man, woman, and child within killed. Even muslim chroniclers recoiled in disgust.

I was not surprised when I read that Dawkins' the God Delusion was praised by Pinker. Is it just me, or is there some connection between adaptationist sociobiology and complete scholarly/historical incompetence among evolutionists?

Ever since you've been writing these posts I've been wondering about Pinker's measuring violence rates rather than violent acts. He takes the number of violent acts, divides it by the world population of the time, and then calculates what that number would be with world populations at other times.

I'm not convinced this is a valid procedure, for a couple reasons. First, it seems to make availability the only consideration in the committing of violent acts. But surely many other things come into play here so that a one-to-one correspondence is incredibly speculative. Second, I don't see how human suffering can be reduced to calculation like this. Sure, X number of people died, and (ex hypothesi) in our day that number would have been 3X. So what? It wasn't in our day, and the number of people who died was X, not 3X. So you still can't ascribe Pinker's inflated number of deaths to the causes that brought about the deaths in question. Those were real people who died, and Pinker's calculated numbers are not.

Two questions. Does Dr. Pinker include suicide as a form of "violent death”? If not, this is a rather significant omission, considering the fact that in the US one is on average more likely to die of suicide than murder. (see "the suicide paradox" on freakanomics website)

The second question is related to Jim S's. How does Pinker's conversion rate take into account the basic process whereby "quantity changes into quality". If a tribe of 100 goes to war, 20 of whom are warriors, and half of them get killed, this amounts to 10% of the population. If a nation of 100 million goes to war, 2 million (considering the current non-existence of any nation of that size with a 20 million person military!) of whom are in the military, a third of whom get killed (due to improvements in technology), this amounts to 0.66% of the population. The apparent statistical improvement may well be due to the increasingly efficient violence of modern economies of scale, together with increasingly efficient healthcare, rather than any real decrease of social violence over time. Has this been dealt with?

If we're going to group the crusades as one, why not do the same with the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Italy's Ethiopian war, both world wars, the Spanish Civil War, the Ukrainian famine, etc? They're as interconnected as the Crusades were, if not more.

You said: However the overwhelming majority of deaths during the 30 Years’ War were caused by disease – specifically typhus, dysentery and bubonic plague.

True of most wars, almost including World War I, where a third of conflict casualties came from disease. Disease killed 305 to 50% of the people in World War II, depending on civilian or military, and location.

It makes a whole lot of difference if you're comparing casualties from disease among soldiers who, for instance, die in the trenches as a direct result of warfare and the unhealthy conditions created by it, and people dying in great numbers from disease and starvation in regions where no actual fighting is going on at the time. Again, the WWI and WWII death tolls that are usually passed around do not, for the most part, include the latter kind of casualty. The immense death tolls for the Thirty Years War invariably do.

Furthermore, if you want to talk about disease, you also have to talk about disease prevention, the means of which were vastly more restricted in the 17th century than they were in the 20th. This brings us back to one of the core oversights in Pinker's thesis: injuries and diseases that can be easily healed nowadays meant certain death in earlier periods. If you do not take that into account, you're bound to present a distorted picture.

1) I went to the pinker website; how on earth can you trust anyone whoose blog is black background with white text ? I mean, such a poor sense of design has to be saying something about his soul2) Strangely , I always thought Pinker's strenght was history of philosophy; his little throw aways, in a prev book, onhume, etc, are the only writings on philosophers that Ive ever found enjoyable and intelligble

A lot of people don't like the conclusions Pinker came to. So they are desperately searching all 832 pages of his book for anything that can be interpreted as an error. Given the amount of data in his book it is inevitable that people will be able to find a few facts that they can make good arguments against. The fact that people are putting such tremendous effort into finding picayune errors and ignoring the central thesis as much as they can shows the works impact.

Well, the book contains a lot of interesting talking points and arguments (some of which I agree with) but a lot of dubious data and unsafe assertions. You don't have to 'desperately search' through it to find errors in fact I think I have restricted myself to only 2 pages.

"The massacres of the Jews were carried out by Count Emicho of Leiningen, whose interest was pecuniary rather than religious. The big moneylenders of the time were Jews and Lombards, and the Lombard cities had armies. When some Jews took refuge in the bishop's palace, Emicho did not hesitate to storm the palace, which does not sound very religious. He and his "crusaders" never got near the Holy Land and were finally slaughtered by the king of Hungary. Meanwhile, such activities were condemned by both religious and secular authorities. "

And why were the Jews big moneylenders? Because as JEWS they couldn't own land! So the JEWS weren't of the right religious persuasion.

Face it Baerista, your chosen moral paragon has been the leading force behind or complicit in many of the atrocities of history. It continues to this day. Bending little boys over all while denyinig and covering up.

Face it Baerista, your chosen moral paragon has been the leading force behind or complicit in many of the atrocities of history. It continues to this day. Bending little boys over all while denyinig and covering up.

A humble suggestion for the next time you are going to make asinine comments about strangers: try to figure out what their "chosen moral paragon" is. As far as I know Baerista is not religious and he's certainly no apologist. He's somebody who likes to see history without ideological myths. That might be a great "chosen moral paragon" for you, too.

yes I'll "keep apologing", while also aspiring to be an atheist, who's nonetheless intellectually honest about history. I'm not sure what your shtick is, but the words "intellectual" and "honest" probably don't make an appearance.

Speaking of Pinker's work, I ran across a book by Lawrence H. Keeley, called, War Before Civilization (Oxford University Press; 1996), in which Keeley cites archeological evidence (including bones in ancient graves) to argue that human beings used to kill each other more often in the past than today, percentage-wise.

Keeley displays charts of relative mobilization rates and casualty rates among tribes and modern nations. He suggests that the terrible Twentieth Century wars would have had a death-rate twenty times higher "if the world's population were still organized into bands, tribes, and chiefdoms": the typical tribal combat casualty rate of .5 percent per year, during the course of the century would translate to "more than 2 billion war deaths." See: War Before Civilization

Keeley also pointed out that a higher percentage of the populace of Europe was killed in the 17th century (during times of high religious adherence, when everybody was a creationist and believer in the Apostle's Creed) than during World War 2.

I also read elsewhere that evidence of cannibalism in the human past continues to surface in ancient archeological digs and even has been discovered inside human genes.

So if you take the long view, and agree with Keeley (though I have read criticisms of his conclusions), deaths due to intertribal warfare and murder were more prominent in the past than in the present, i.e., percentage-wise per total population. So if Adam fell, it appears he may have fallen upward not downward over the centuries.

The question of how many people were killed by "Christians" compared with how many were killed by "atheists" does not prove much. Neither the medieval popes nor Luther and Calvin liked the idea of freedom of conscience/belief, and they all argued in favor of the necessity of the government persecuting "heretics."

Was the early church kinder than the medieval church? Christians started rioting over the beliefs of other Christians (the great Arian-Athanasian debate) not very long after the first Roman Emperor arose who also was a Christian, and that turned into the legalized persecution of all "unorthodox" Christians, as well as Jews and pagans, which became the medieval way.

Earlier still we have the NT books that speak about shunning Christians whose beliefs don't conform, cursing them in fact with "anathema," "turning them over to Satan," "he who does not believe is condemned already" (John 3), fearing the "spirit of antichrist," and Paul's view in 1 Cor. that "many [Christians!] are ill and some have fallen asleep [died]" as the direct result of God's "judgment." As wel as the story in Acts about Peter and a husband and wife who died instantly after speaking with Peter, struck down by God for lying about how much they have donated to the church (it wasn't "all," but only "some" of their money). But the fear is omnipresent in the NT. "Fear him who can cast both body and soul into hell." Such fear can drive people to want to keep the devil and heresy away at all cost, which was the basis of arguing that once Christians gained power they ought to use it for godly ends, to prevent eternally damnable "anti-Christian" influences from spreading.

Personally, I view the matter of human aggression and violence toward other humans in a biological, psychological, and sociological fashion. Humans are a social and also competitive species of primate, not to mention the urge to conform to one's society and agree with its prejudices, and its notions of what is shameful and what is honorable, add to that the effects of plain old ignorance and stupidity about what's "really" happening around us, as well as difficulties in two people coming to agreement concerning nearly any subject on earth let alone in heaven too, there's even inherent difficulties in mutual comprehension and communication. Cultural differences no doubt include religious differences.

And there's the way the mind makes grandiose assumptions and generalizations, and how we naturally learn to fear and like different things, or fear and like the same things but to different degrees. No two people love the same people, pets, songs, movies. There's lots we disagree on to begin with, and that can always escalate.

Pinker also has discussed the sociological observation that simply being stubborn and irrational about whatever one loves or believes can "pay off" in the end http://bigthink.com/ideas/41394

I'd like to add to what Pinker wrote at the site above and note that everyone is stubborn to one degree or another about what they think, or think they know, about the basis of their beliefs. Because each of us only knows what we know, only has read certain books, met certain people, so we are the center of "what we know," and vice versa, whatever it is that we know appears "central" to us.

Psychology experiments also suggest that challenging someone's beliefs may make that person more likely to defend them with greater vigor, not less.

Still other experiments indicate that believing in what one is told by an authority figure who speaks, writes or debates with confidence, is more common than questioning what one is told by authority figures. And unfortunately the person who appears the most confident does not necessarily possess the most expertise.

All of this means that once the brain-mind has an idea or set of ideas that seems to fit together, it's not likely to jetiison the entire set and start over from scratch building up a new set of ideas, but will more likely make smaller adjustments and admissions. Changes in the brain-mind are mostly conservative (perhaps both mentally and also neurologically speaking).

And this raises the QUESTION of what kind of God would make it difficult to see things as others see them, especially concerning the difficulty of perceiving which beliefs can allegedly save or damn people for all eternity?

All brain-minds appear to be adept at acquiring a set of interlocking ideas such that they are not prone to jettisoning them all at once in exchange for a complete new set of ideas. Data from sociology, psychology and cognitive science appear to shed light on the phenomenon of "stubbornly maintaining differences of opinion," and such data holds true for beliefs not even related to religion. At some point it no longer made as much sense to me to try and sum up cases of stubborn disagreement as illustrations of "sinful blindness," but rather as cases of the brain-mind's in-built conservative properties. So, "religious" disagreements became merely a subset of the study of disagreements, misunderstandings, and miscommuniations, in general, a sub-set of sociology, psychology, and cognitive science. And what kind of God would design human brain-minds that reacted as ours did, and then at the end of our short lives of limited knowledge and limited experience blame us for not believing the right things about "the divine," not loving the right holy books, not focusing on and rightly understanding the right passages in those holy books, not finding certain arguments convincing, and/or not falling deeply in love with the same "divine" images and things?

Keeley also pointed out that a higher percentage of the populace of Europe was killed in the 17th century (during times of high religious adherence, when everybody was a creationist and believer in the Apostle's Creed) than during World War 2.

Welcome to Quodlibeta

The Latin word Quodlibeta means "whatever you like" and refers to the special occasions at medieval universities when the students (or clerks as they were known) could test their masters by asking any question they fancied. This blog is primarily concerned with religion, science, history and their interface. But like the medieval clerks, we reserve the right to post on anything we want.

I am a historian of a very middling and amateurish sort. Having taken a Masters in Modern History at the University of St Andrews (2004), I completed a law conversion course at Nottingham Law School and embarked upon what has been an exciting career in legal technology. My chief interests are in Twentieth Century History, Colonial America, Historiography and, most recently, the History of Science. I also write a satirical blog at The Diary of Humphrey Clarke. I hope my contributions to Quodlibeta capture something of the pleasure I get from trawling my dusty collection of second hand history books.

Jim S

I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Master's degrees in Philosophy and Theology. I'm a generalist, my areas of expertise being epistemology, logic, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and science and religion. I did my philosophical studies in Continental Europe, and currently reside in the Pacific Northwest. I also write the Agent Intellect blog. In my mid-20s I decided to refute Christianity to set my conscience at ease. Two subjects I turned to in particular were science and philosophy. I accidentally argued myself into it.